Page 18 of The Court of Venus

“What a fair day!” Agnes called out to the sea of courtiers.

“Yet I see a wandering star on the horizon,” Cecily said, peering over her turret. By the windowsill, Wyatt mouthed the lines to himself.

“What’s that!” cried a maid of honor.

Roland strode from the shadows, pointing a wooden sword at the castle. “We don’t care to wander any longer, fair maidens.”

The crowd laughed, delighted.

“Stay back, Venus!” Cecily shouted.

“I’ll take them all!” said Jupiter, crawling on hands and knees through the crowd. Fulke Roet, by the slur of his voice. “Or at least four or five. The fiery signs are mine.”

“Look at each other, maidens! Such beauty. I’d have you fight amongst yourselves instead,” cried red-robed Mars, and then the men stormed the castle, and we all pretended to faint.

Eyes shut, lying limp on the ground, I was hoisted into a man’s arms and cradled close to his chest, tucked beneath a cleft chin. Something stirred, a warmth in my stomach when the man pulled me close, his fingers digging into my waist.

“Well, I’ll just have this one, Jupiter,” the man said, and I longed to stopper the warmth before it spread, because it was Roland’s voice, Roland’s body I was pressed against.

As strings fluttered for a basse dance, I squirmed, silently screaming, I want to be set down. I want Roland to set me down. I desire to be set on my own two feet right now, this instant.

Chuckling to himself, he obliged me. With mounting dread, I realized we were already standing in the middle of the floor, and we’d be partnered together by proximity.

When the dance began, he pranced forward, lifting me up so we were eye to eye, trawling my body against his chest. He set me down again, we skipped to the right, we spun.

He hoisted me up again by the waist. Over his shoulder, I saw the queen, dancing with her brother, eyeing us as if she’d cast a net and drag me away from Roland. “Cecily is watching you,” I said. “I think she’d like to kill me.”

I was set on the ground, and again we skipped. “She’d like to do something rather different to me,” Roland whispered, his dawn eyes shining.

I wrenched my hand from his. His smirk vanished. “The Guildfords are meeting in their chapel tonight. Is that what you wanted me to find out?”

“I’ve never had ears inside of that room. They don’t let Joan inside, but I’m sure they wouldn’t notice a mouse.” I spun beneath his arm and was tugged to his chest. He breathed, “I’d like to know every little thing they say.”

“I’m not your ears,” I protested. “I’m there to learn about Hal.”

“You can do both, can’t you?”

“My interests take priority over yours.”

The music faded. Fulke Roet insisted on playing a composition he had written himself. By the tittering of the court, this was a common occurrence. Roland lifted a hand and motioned for him to play on. The gentle pluck of Fulke’s lute meant a slower dance. A pavane.

Roland took my hand in his again, leading me down the length of the floor. “You forget you are here at my pleasure,” he said from the corner of his mouth.

As I opened mine to protest, there was a piercing scream.

Our heads whipped around.

Beside the banquet table, a body lay at a strange angle. Blood frothing from his lips, flopping up and down like a fish struggling to breathe. His golden eyes had rolled back into his head. Just this morning, he’d laughed beside me at that very table.

“No,” I gasped. Though I was in disguise as Joan, I still ran to him, knelt beside him, and pressed my cheek to his heart. It was beating sluggishly, so terribly slow, and his mind was already furling in on itself, closing up. All I could feel was his anguish, his fear. As I gripped his hand tighter, his rings dug into my palm. Calm yourself. There is nothing to be afraid of. He smiled up at me serenely, then his heart shuddered, and the sand of his life slipped through my fingers.

I fell back from his body. The blood on Ambrose’s doublet trembled with reflected moonlight. The orbs of his eyes, once so vibrant, now emptied of light. The queen and her ladies clutched each other. Wyatt Francis declared his masque ruined. And Fulke Roet stood at the fringes of the gathering crowd, asking what happened, saying how terrible, is that a magician on the floor?

Yet his was the only mind not stumbling about in shock.

Ambrose’s body was rolled beneath the banquet table. The blood was soaked up by Roland’s magic, and dancing resumed. The court was too accustomed to gore, too hardened to death, to end the festivities early.

While I lay in my bed hours later, watching the Moon carve up the darkness in my room, my hands shook. The terror, at least, was proof I was not yet cold-blooded.